Call of Duty devs slap back at players claiming Modern Warfare 4 SBMM is 'cranked'

Despite being the best Call of Duty instalment in 15 years, Modern Warfare 4 players have run into the same age-old issue that comes every year: Skill-based matchmaking.

Modern Warfare 4 has been a smash hit. At least, on paper.

The campaign specifically is astounding, writing a decade of wrongs with a dark storyline that had series fanatics on the edge of their seat the whole way through.

So much so that its 87 rating on Metacritic is the highest since Modern Warfare 2 (2011) and equals the original Black Ops as joint sixth on the all-time Call of Duty list.

Yet, now that multiplayer has launched, which comes as the biggest part of the experience, the consensus is shifting thanks to one feature.

Tipped as a necessary evil by the Call of Duty developers - often pandering to the mass casual player base rather than the loud minority of everyday grinders - SBMM is driving Modern Warfare 4 players up the wall.

Call of Duty multiplayer director Joe Cecot says there's no such thing as 'perfected' matchmaking

Trying to end the Modern Warfare rebooted series on a high, the multiplayer experience hasn't yet lived up to the hype delivered by the campaign.

Map design and SBMM have been the two major cruxes of the game so far, and now the latter is getting a lot of attention on social media.

"Modern Warfare 4 MP is ... something. Maps are not that good. Spawns are still broken after beta. And SBMM is cranked up to the max," said popular community outlet CharlieIntel.

Content creator 'TGDefinition' added, "First game of MW4 full release, I faced zero level 1 players. Everyone already had ghost unlocked, there were some level 50s.

"The fact that sbmm has Carried over this harshly from other entries and likely the beta is unacceptable."

A third said, "Double negative after coming home from work and just wanting to chill on MW4. Modern Warfare 4 needs to bring back full on open matchmaking seriously. A lot of people will just quit playing because of this."

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With players questioning whether skill-based matchmaking has been 'cranked' up to eleven, multiplayer creative director Joe Cecot has weighed in on the debate.

Speaking to IGN, Cecot admitted that finding a matchmaking system capable of satisfying everyone is probably impossible.

"I don't know if there's perfecting it," Cecot said.

"For us, I think the most important thing when we look at matchmaking is that the matches we put together are good matches.

"And we're also looking at the players and their experience, and we can look at the data and how it affects things, and we can quantify how it affects a certain group of players or a large percentage of them in a negative way.

"Our end goal is that every match is a good match.".

That's a fairly straightforward ambition, but one that has proven difficult to achieve across a franchise as competitive as Call of Duty.